My mother died. No — I'm told she died.
The mother who walked out on us before I even started elementary school.
In the well over fifteen years since, I have never seen her face or heard a word about her.
And that mother, I'm told, left me an officetel.
One located fairly close to the school I attend, no less.......
Honestly, I was happy about it.
After all, no more working myself to death at part-time jobs, no more living on tiptoe around my shit-tempered uncle.
For me, with my father dead too, drifting from one relative's house to the next, independence had always been my highest goal and my dream.
And that dream was finally coming true! Overnight, no less!
Honestly, all the resentment I'd carried toward her felt like it melted away in an instant, the way snow melts.
But here's the thing. Luck like that was never going to come rolling into the fate of Kang Do-yul, a man who carries misfortune around with him.
I'm the dumbass for getting my hopes up, even for a second.
***
The first time I noticed something 'off' was in the elevator.
At the time, I had pressed the button for the twelfth floor, where 'my new home' was, and just before the doors closed, a delivery driver got on.
The savory smell of fried chicken filled the car, and the driver, after checking that the twelfth-floor button was already lit, leaned against the wall and fiddled with his phone.
The two of us rode up to the twelfth floor in silence, and when we arrived, I walked down the right-hand corridor and the driver went down the left.......
.......
Is that the end of it? It is.
What's 'off' about anything I just said?
Sure, taken on its own, you could call it a trivial coincidence.
But what if that coincidence kept repeating?
And what if I were the only one who noticed the abnormal repetition?
Getting the picture now?
In this damn officetel, there is nobody who goes anywhere but the twelfth floor!
Delivery drivers, the laundromat guy, the lady coming back from walking her dog, every single one of them!
All of them, without a single exception!
When I press the twelfth-floor button, everyone who gets on after me just watches!
No thought of pressing another button, not the faintest hint of it, just a reaction like, 'Oh, the button for the twelfth floor I was headed to is already pressed?' and nothing more!
Everyone heads to the twelfth floor. As if, in this tall eighteen-story building, nobody lives on any floor but the twelfth.
Now do you see?
Just how strange a situation I'm in?
Still don't get it? It's an officetel, so that could happen?
Right, that's what I thought at first too.
Because it's an officetel.
Because plenty of the units get used as offices.
Because the people using them as homes might just happen to be clustered on the twelfth floor.
I really didn't think much of it at all.
Because on top of this nonsense, I had plenty of real problems tormenting me.
But...... what happened in front of me just now went far beyond anything I could understand.
Today there'd been a drinking party with classmates over whether somebody was enlisting or not, and I'd put away a serious amount of alcohol I don't normally touch, leaving me half out of my mind.
To save on cab fare, I shook off my classmates' hands as they urged me to keep going and took the last subway home.
The moment I staggered through the revolving door on the first floor of the officetel, I snapped wide awake.
It wasn't that I saw anything.......
It was just.
The air was different.
Different from the outside air, which was turning sticky and muggy, not the coolness an air conditioner makes but an ominous chill seeping out from somewhere deep inside, and it snapped my eyes open.
Home was right there anyway, so I forced myself to ignore it and got on the elevator, and the twelfth floor was already pressed.
I glanced around, but there was nobody there except me.
Staring at the button glowing red with a 12, strangely, irritation started rising in me instead of fear.
'The f*ck is this? What, am I only allowed to go to the twelfth floor?' It'll sound bizarre, but that is really what I was thinking at the time.
I was drunk, sure.
Try living without a mom or a dad like me and see what it does to your temperament.......
Out of some strange defiance, for the first time I pressed a button for a floor other than the twelfth.
The eighth, I think.
The elevator was already past the fifth floor when I pressed it, so the eighth was the most reasonable choice.
The instant I pressed eight. The elevator stopped.
Not that it stopped at the eighth floor.
The moment I pressed the button, the elevator simply stopped dead, ignoring every law of physics.
The panel that displayed the floor number in red began to flicker, and the lights inside the car began flickering along with it.
And a moment later, every light inside the elevator went out.
A darkness dense enough that I couldn't see my own hand in front of my face.
In that darkness, the only emotions I could feel were regret and terror.
I pounded wildly on the doors and started shouting for help, but nobody answered my cries.
I groped around and pressed the emergency call button.
The instant I pressed it, there was a click, and then someone's voice.
'What seems to be the problem?'
A bored voice through the speaker.
"I'm trapped in the elevator! Help me! Please!"
At my frantic shout, a low laugh came through the speaker, and after a moment, a reply.
'Please wait a moment.'
The connection went dead with a snap.
Strangely, that made me more afraid.
That smeared voice in the speaker, impossible to tell man from woman.
The darkness all around, pressing down on me.
The silence, without even the faintest mechanical hum, was driving me insane.
I crawled into the corner of the elevator. Very slowly, very carefully.
Leaning into the corner, I took the phone out of my pocket.
Just as I was about to turn on the screen, an unease with no traceable source stopped me.
Somehow I got the feeling that if I turned on a light now, I would see something I wasn't supposed to see.
I set the phone down on the floor, clapped both hands over my ears, and squeezed my eyes shut.
And then I started hearing sounds I hadn't heard until then.
The first thing I heard was my own heartbeat.
THUMP, THUMP, THUMP.......
And the next thing I heard was someone humming a song.
A melody strangely familiar to my ear.
Hearing it, somehow my mind grew calmer and calmer.
'I mean, at my age...... is it right to be chickening out like this over nothing more than getting stuck in an elevator?'
And my goddamn defiance came flaring up again.
On that strength, just as I was about to open my eyes, I caught hold of my reason again and slightly eased the pressure of both hands over my ears.
And the melody came through more clearly.
That was when I realized.
That whatever was singing was right beside me, on my left.
It felt like a cold hand clamping around my heart.
And at the same time, several questions bloomed.
Why did hearing the song calm me?
Why is this melody familiar to my ear?
What in the world is beside me?
CRASH—!
A sudden burst of noise, and the song stopped.
CRASH—! CRASH—! CRASH—!
The sounds that followed were definitely coming from the doors.
When I cautiously opened my eyes, I saw the elevator doors slowly parting.
A welcome shaft of light came in through the gap.
Someone's hand forced its way between the doors and wrenched them open as if to tear them apart.
Bright light poured through the opened doors.
In that light, looking down at me, was a woman who seemed about my age.
Her straight black hair broke off exactly at the jawline, and her skin, so white it looked pale, seemed to glow hazily in the light.
On her expressionless face sat a pair of round, thin-rimmed glasses, neatly placed, and behind them, two eyes.
In the pupils turned toward me, a faint red light was blooming.
Simply being on the receiving end of that gaze brought a pressure like my heart being pierced through.
"Are you all right?"
"......What?"
I asked back with a blank face.
She added without so much as blinking.
"You asked for help, just now."
"......Ah."
Watching me fail to give a proper answer, she held out her hand.
A small, cold hand.
Led by that hand, I came out of the elevator.
"Follow me and do not say anything."
"What?"
Before she even heard my question, she was already walking toward the corridor.
Just as I moved to follow, it struck me that my surroundings were unfamiliar.
A corridor stretching unnaturally long.
Fluorescent lights hung from the ceiling at regular intervals, spilling a dim, milky glow.
Even that light was not nearly enough to light the whole corridor.
Between one light and the next, the darkness wasn't merely dark. It was writhing, as if pooled there, as if breathing.
Light and darkness alternating down the length of the corridor, like looking at an enormous water snake.
And on both sides of the corridor.
A long row of navy-blue steel doors.
Every one of them was plastered densely with talismans, yellowed with age.
As if to seal something ominous inside.
"Th...... this, what the hell.......?"
The moment I went to open my mouth, she gestured at me to be quiet.
"Do not open your mouth. Especially when passing through the dark stretches."
She murmured it low as we passed beneath the fluorescent light.
Soon, when we reached the point where the light ended, she stopped.
"No matter who speaks to you in the dark, never answer. If you open your mouth...... something could get in."
With that, she walked quietly into the darkness.
And in that instant—she vanished. Truly.
"......Huh?"
The darkness wasn't thick enough to swallow a person whole, and yet she had disappeared without a trace.
'What just happened?'
Am I dreaming?
As I stood staring blankly at the spot where she'd vanished, she reappeared beneath the fluorescent light.
She looked at me, face still expressionless.
"Hurry up and come."
"Um......? Just now......."
"Shh. Hurry up and come. We have a long way to go."
"......."
At her urging, I slowly took a step.
Under her watching gaze, I walked slowly toward the darkness.
'Something could get in through my mouth, was that it...?'
I clamped both hands over my mouth and took a step into the dark.
And in that instant—the corridor changed.
RATTLE, RATTLE, RATTLE!
The front doors are shaking violently.
The talismans were nowhere to be seen, and from beyond the steel doors came the cry of 'something.'
The doors looked ready to burst open at any second.
Forcing down the scream rising in my throat, I crossed the darkness without once taking my hands from my mouth.
And—the moment I reached the fluorescent light again, everything stopped.
The front doors stood quietly shut, as if nothing had ever happened, and the talismans filled their places once more.
I held my breath for a long while, then carefully took my hands from my mouth.
"...Haaa."
Only then did a sigh of relief leak out.
She came over and pointed toward the emergency stairwell.
Roughly fifty meters away.
"That is where we are going."
And so I kept moving down the corridor of alternating light and dark, following her.
The steel doors in the darkness only rattled precariously; not one of them opened.
Only the last stretch remained before the stairwell.
The moment I stepped into the darkness behind her, that 'being' appeared.
A height easily over two meters.
Navy-blue robes falling to its ankles.
They look like hanbok, but the texture my eyes read is closer to paper.
Over its face it wears a mask carved from wood, shaped as though modeled on the spiral of a snail's shell.
The 'being' bowed its head toward me.
As if greeting me. Slowly, courteously.
'At last you can see me, Young Master.'
The voice rang inside my head.
Low and alien.
And yet strangely familiar.
"Young Master...?"
The word was slipping out of my mouth when I instinctively clamped it shut.
The masked being kept its head bowed, watching me.
As if waiting for my answer.
A silence that choked the breath out of me.
It was the masked being that broke it.
With the sound of countless legs scraping the corridor floor, it came slowly toward me.
Like a frog before a snake, all I could do was stand and watch.
The mask bent at the waist as it approached.
Its mask stops exactly in front of my eyes.
"I shall call upon you again soon, Young Master."
The spiral pattern on the mask begins to rotate, and the spiral starts to suck in the scenery around it.
Before I knew it, the thing in the mask was gone, and I saw the entrance to the emergency stairwell, and the face of the woman standing at it, looking at me.
.......
That is everything I just went through.
Now do you really see?
Just how insane a situation I'm in?
Get out of here right now, you say?
Obviously!
Damn that mother of mine, what the hell did she leave me?!
My own home? A space of my own?
I don't need any of it!
I have to get out of here right now!